write what you want (we'll paint the truth)
by Lumielt
Summary: "A picture's worth a thousand words, right?" Monroe asks seriously. "We'll tell our own history." "Yeah," Raven adds, "they can keep their damn book."


When the first history book is handed to Clarke and Bellamy, a year after Mount Weather fell and less than half a year since Clarke returned to Camp Jaha, they're both touched and proud. Clarke runs her fingers over the leather cover, the words _From Ark To Earth_ embossed on it. Below that is _Tania Pile_ and _Leo Ascelin_, names that Clarke only recognizes due to the fact that the two middle-aged Ark citizens had spent the past weeks interviewing everyone they could: Clarke and Bellamy, Abby and Kane, soldiers, delinquents, those that came down on the Ark, even a few Grounders.

The remainder of the 100 read the book together. Bellamy, Raven, and Clarke all take turns reading it aloud, the rest of the delinquents clustered around them in the Arkship room. They've taken over Raven and Wick's workshop area, seated on chairs and tables, projects carefully moved out of the way.

Bellamy reads first, skilled from years of reading to his sister as children. He hands it to Clarke when it reaches Wells' death—although it neglects to mention Charlotte by name, and only skims over the horrific scene of Murphy being blamed and the aftermath of that—and her eyebrows slowly knit into a frown as she goes through the chapter.

By the time it's Raven's turn, the book's already to the 48 being stuck in Mount Weather, and all of the gathered are muttering and whispering to each other. So much has been glossed over: the sickness that caused them to bleed from their eyes, the fear and tension of waiting for the Grounders' next attack, the pain and shock of seeing a friend die before their eyes. Some people are left out entirely: Charlotte, Sterling, Fox, and Roma, among others, are all collectively referred to as _the dead_.

The entire book is almost cheerfully clinical, refusing to give any true acknowledgement to the hardships of war and survival. If Clarke hadn't experienced it all firsthand, she would've thought landing on earth had been almost boring, with the way Ascelin and Piles wrote it.

"This is crap." Raven finally announces, dropping the book onto her lap. "This is all bull."

There's a ripple of agreement, angry _yeah_s and _this is bull_ echoed angrily by the remaining 100. Clarke's frown hasn't left her face. Jasper's hands are clenched in fists, and Monroe next to him has stony fury in her eyes.

Bellamy is the one to finish reading the handmade book, and while there are no more interruptions, the air remains tensely furious at the erasure of suffering.

"What were they _thinking_?" Clarke all but yells an hour later. The majority of the group's disbanded, but what Clarke quietly thinks of as the core group has remained behind. Raven and both Blakes are standing next to the blonde girl; Jasper and Monty are seated on a table next to Wick; Murphy and Miller lean against one wall, while Monroe and Harper sit nearby.

"It's ridiculous," the blonde leader continues. "How could they _write_ this? How could they just…_ignore_ so much of what happened?"

"Not like they didn't waste our time enough interviewing us," Murphy says dryly. It's true; both historians spent hours talking to the residents of Camp Jaha, and each of the delinquents went over their stories repeatedly with them. For the pair to simply discard so much of what was told to them feels like a slap on the face.

"They left out Sterling." Monroe's frown is as deep as Clarke's. "And Roma, and Fox, and Atom."

"They left out us _bleeding_ from our _eyeballs_," Murphy retorts. "It'd be easier to list what they bothered to leave in."

"I guess they thought it was too harsh to record," Harper says flatly.

"Then they shouldn't have recorded it." Octavia replies.

"Don't snap at _me_." Octavia's angry tone wasn't directed at Harper, but the other girl takes it that way. "I'm not the one that wrote it."

"Then don't defend it," Octavia bites back.

"Whoa, whoa." Bellamy raises both hands in a vaguely warning gesture. "Let's not start fighting, okay? The book sucks, but we don't need to bite each other's heads off."

"Whatever." Harper rises, leaving the room. Monroe and Miller trail behind her.

"This blows." Murphy snorts, then exits as well.

"So what do you want to do, Princess?" Raven's tone is slightly sharp as she addresses Clarke. "Burn the book? Give it back?"

Clarke sighs. "We'll give it back, I guess. Unless anyone wants it."

No one does, and the meeting slowly dissolves, air heavy with frustration and sorrow.

Clarke draws when she's upset. It's what got her through solitary: sketching the ground over and over, until the walls of her cell were covered in charcoal trees and animals. She paints now, using pencils from the Ark and paints made by the Grounders, in a large sketchpad taken from the Ark's supplies.

She paints everything that was left out of the history book. A watercolor of Finn's blood dripping down her hand, staining her knife with crimson liquid and her heart with guilt and sorrow. A page with Charlotte's face as she tells Clarke about her nightmares, and another with simply an empty cliff. Raven's blood washing off of her scraped-up temple as she experiences rain for the first time. Bellamy standing behind a pieced-together model of the Dropship and the forest, a leader too young for the responsibility he's being forced to shoulder. She paints two small pictures of Anya's hand: once holding a stone, and once shaking Clarke's own.

She paints the dead, every one of them. Delinquents with trails of blood drying on their faces, aftermath of the Grounders' disease. Pale, bandaged kids with holes from marrow drilled out of them. Roma pinned to a tree by a spear. Sterling lying at the hard ground at the base of the cliff. Fox falling from a metal chute. Three hundred skeletons, charred black and lying at the base of the Dropship.

Raven keeps her company, sitting on Clarke's cot as the blonde girl works.

"I like that one," she'll gesture to a picture. Or, "The color's wrong, his shirt was more blue." The comments are welcome. Two memories pool together, making sure nothing is lost from mind to paper.

Part of Clarke wishes that all these memories would just go away, that they'd leave her as the paint leaves her brush. But she continues reliving them and redrawing them, with Raven's company, because she knows deep within herself that they deserve better than that. The past shouldn't be forgotten, names and pain erased by decidedly-not-harsh books.

"Can I join you?" Jasper asks quietly on the third day of painting. Clarke nods, and Raven pats the space beside her on the cot. Unlike Raven, though, Jasper chooses to join Clarke's current occupation, grabbing a pen and a pad of paper.

Raven leans back on her hands, watching Clarke's brush adding color to Octavia holding a sword, and Jasper's pen sketch out a slightly clumsy and obviously heartfelt portrait of Maya.

By the fourth day, Clarke's mentally exhausted and almost out of paint, and Monroe has joined her small audience.

"Are we going to give this to them?" The girl with the braids asks, flipping through pages as Clarke takes a break.

"Give it to who?" Clarke hadn't actually considered what she was going to do with the sketchpad when she's done. She drew for release and for relief, not out of any material reason.

"The rest of the Arkers. Like a visual history. A _real_ one, not like the one those other guys wrote."

"I didn't think about it." Clarke replies slowly.

"A picture's worth a thousand words, right?" Monroe continues seriously. "We'll tell our own history."

"Yeah," Raven adds, "they can keep their damn book."

The corner of Clarke's lips move upwards, frown lifting from her face for the first time in days. " The sorrow previously weighing over her, both from reliving old memories and from Pile and Ascelin's history book, is lifting at Monroe's idea.

"Can we add to it?" Jasper motions towards the sketchpad in Monroe's hands.

"Of course." Clarke locates a small bottle of glue in her art supplies, and Jasper hands her the picture of Maya. The blonde girl fixes it carefully to an empty page, writing _Maya Vie, by Jasper Jordan _below it in a careful hand.

It turns out to be only half of a visual history—and that's fine with Clarke. Bellamy is enlisted to write the stories behind each picture, filling the other side of the pages with the harsh, painful, truthful history. As word travels throughout the camp, the other teens begin to chime in, relating experiences to Bellamy and Clarke both to be put in the book. Some of the stories tug at Clarke's heart—things like Harper not being able to hear a drill without flinching and automatically expecting pain, or Monty having nightmares of Mount Weather night after night, even after a year.

Not all of the memories are bad, of course. Octavia grins and reminisces about chasing butterflies, and Jasper tells the story of the hallucinatory nuts in a way that makes everyone listening laugh. The start of friendships are recalled fondly, as are victories; even little triumphs like learning how to use a knife or start a fire. There's an entire chapter dedicated to everyone's thoughts upon feeling the sun and wind for the first time in their life. It's a chapter full of wonder and beauty and incredulousness, and Clarke finds herself smiling as she illustrates it.

After a week and a half of painting and writing, laughing and crying, their own book is finished. It's not as elegant as the leather-bound copy they were handed—it's very obviously a sketchbook with a cover painted on. But it's the truth, harsh and beautiful and painful and lovely. No one is forgotten. No one is left out, or glossed over, or made less horrific.

Clarke, with Bellamy and Raven on either side of her, hands it to Kane and Abby.

"It's our history," she tells them as Abby turns the pages with an unreadable expression. "It's everything that wasn't said.

"It's the story of The 100."


End file.
